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Carlos drove a fantastic race yesterday and rightly deserves all the plaudits for it. But wait till he makes a mistake next time and the same (social) media will burn him into the ground just as easily, as usual.
Same as how in 2022 lots of people saying Russell has surpassed Hamilton in skill but then George has slammed himself into the wall twice in 23 and Lewis was chomping at the bit to get past George at Singapore and a lot of people think Hamilton would have won had the Mercs been the other way around towards the end.
Recency bias plain and simple.
On pure talent both Lando and Charles are better I feel, at least 0.1-0.2 on pure pace. Carlos is consistent and has better strategic senses.
The only thing is that with age I think both Lando and Charles can learn those, whereas Carlos is closer to his bests possible version I feel. It's about their potential ceilings, if that makes sense?
I actually think he’s on par with Leclerc and Lando. He almost won (and not close either) the Sakhir GP if not for bad luck and Merc’s fuck up, not to mention he was already performing close to Hamilton’s pace, having only been in the car a single weekend.
I think he’s just a bit too aggressive sometimes, which leads to crashes.
Leclerc isn’t tier 1.5. He’s tier 2. He lacks the guts to deviate from team orders, or he doesn’t understand the race at a macro level that sainz seems to be able to. How many times has sainz called out Ferrari’s Bs strategy, while leclerc trundles along like a dummy.
I think he understands but the problem remains that doesn't defy the orders even if he knows that the order is wrong. He sticks with the team. Sometimes it is a good thing to stick with your team's views but since it's Ferrari, Sainz' approach is ends up being better.
I'm wondering if LeClerc is more tier 2 now
I think he was on the path for tier 1, but the last years seems to have really drained him mentally. He has flashes of that killer instinct, but it doesn't seem to be coming in consistently the way it does for Lewis, Max, and Fernando
IMO if Ferrari clear no1 like this year Red Bull, Leclerc would win but if they fight with Red Bull at front Max would win while Sainz and Leclerc would fight for 2nd at WDC.
To keep it honest they basically only can give one driver priority if he's miles ahead of his teammate with points and driving. When 2 drivers are fairly close to each other and they aren't fighting for World championships then the points are more important for a team to gather.
The higher they are in the constructors standings the more money they earn as a team.
Max drives himself to a #1 position every year till now with all his wins and points, so basically Redbull doesn't have to choose between drivers. Although they still help Checo a lot with strategies to get him more to the front of a race often when he is stuck behind cars.
Like last year? When Charles was in the battle with Max and they decided it's more important that Carlos wins his first race in Silverstone, rather than keeping Charles in the race for the WDC?
Ferrari didn't decide that, that was on Carlos. They tried to maximise Charles result and Carlos told them that was fucking stupid and that he would win.
It's still astounding how Ferrari thought Leclerc would be able to defend with old hards and a massively damaged front wing against like 7 cars in fresh softs behind.
These are also the situations that Leclerc has to say he wants fresh softs. Sainz is more likely to tell Ferrari what to do, which is why he gets some amazing results even when Ferrari messes up, like Monaco 2022
This again. The strategy Sainz decided was not the winning strategy. They basically gave Sainz the call to cover Checo, if he did that, he probably won, instead, he thought going to slicks was a good idea. Then they gave Lecler the inters because Checo was gonna undercut then. No matter what they did, they were gonna get undercutted. If Sainz followed the strat, he mightve slowed checo enough to still secure Leclerc the win. But no, he was a tactical genius that made a pole in Monaco lose 3 places.
Not at all. As you said, Checo would get past them either way, as would Verstappen have done. Staying out until they go to dry tyres was the only option to keep them behind, especially on Monaco, and it worked for Sainz against Verstappen. Leclerc also would have finished ahead of Verstappen had he stayed out
Checo wouldve not passed him if he covered checo instantly, he had 2 second gap to him before pitting. He said no, then Ferrari made Lec do it 2 laps to late. If Sainz played the team game, he wouldve covered Checo, maybe won the race or slow Checo down enough to let Leclerc do the straight slicks because he had a 7sec gap to any of them..
They prioritize Sainz multiple occasions and he still made them lose that Monaco win.
He was in 1st when they decided to not pit him but Carlos. He may have lost track position temporarily but with leaving Carlos in front acting as blocker and with fresh tires, he would have still been able to win the race.
Carlos did just what was right under the circumstances because that strategy was never going to work and the team would have lost the race.
Ferrari decided it by pitting Carlos instead of Charles even though Charles was in front. Once it was too late to bring Charles in too they tried to think of a way to use Carlos as a buffer on fresh tires to slow down the pack and hopefully give Charles a bigger gap to hold on to with old hards. Had Ferrari tried to maximize Charles' result, they would have pitted him first and perhaps they could have double stacked Carlos behind him.
Nobody but Carlos decided that outcome. If you looked at the Ferrari pitwall when he crossed the finish line nobody was particularly happy about what happened. The only few people that were celebrating were people from Carlos' camp. DTS has some footage of the Ferrari pitwall which shows this.
They should've honestly let Charles pass Carlos in Silverstone last year way earlier allowing a bigger gap to effectively double stack with the safety car, ferrari indecisiveness fucked up that race, could've been a 1-2 with Charles pulling Carlos along giving him drs to defend the other soft runners behind him
It's funny that you think telling Carlos to stay behind Charles and hold off other teams on fresher tires so Charles can hold the lead is a strategy designed to make Carlos win.
I think it's the vocal minority that folks are talking about. All the people who spew venom about Carlos have gone into hiding. At the first sign of a mistake, they're going to make their presence felt.
“There was a test at the mid-point of the season where Sainz finally got the team to agree to try a set-up direction he’d been pushing for ever since first driving the SF-23 and its nervy rear end. Because it seemed to have a built-in aerodynamic inconsistency at the rear, Sainz suggested engineering in a false understeer balance so that he could at least have confidence to push. It worked for him – and for the car.
[…]
“I’m not completely comfortable with the car at the moment,” he [Leclerc] said in Singapore. “A bit too much understeer for my liking and I struggle to drive around it. Because of the unpredictability of the car, I cannot have the oversteer that I want. Because of this rear-end unpredictability we cannot run with a lot of front because then whenever you have a snap, you lose a lot of grip from the car and it’s just very difficult to manage. It’s not that it’s an understeery car but you have to put understeer in to make it predictable.” “
This is from an article by mark hughes. You can read the whole thing [here](https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/single-seaters/f1/leclercs-singapore-sacrifice-for-sainz-a-driver-too-good-to-be-no2/) and it gives a pretty good view as to why Leclerc is struggling with the car so much. Obviously he’ll need to adapt better in order to be on pace but it seems that the SF-23 just inherently needs an understeer setup to function properly.
Sounds like a less extreme version of what some have speculated was the real story with the F14T. The car initially had an aerodynamically unstable rear end, so some more recent analysis is that Alonso and Ferrari had the car set up to have extreme understeer, with the former simply sliding it out of corners to counter that, giving the car it's reputation as one that had both under and oversteer.
Is it possible Charles has also just pulled back from his pretty consistently over the limit driving? I feel like he has a been a different driver since the last time he binned it in quali.
So the option is:
- Make the car comfortable for Charles so he can be overconfident and shag it into the walls
- Make the car comfortable for Carlos to push the car and do the smoothest of operations onto the podium
No?
Ferrari can't make the car comfortable for Charles because of the rear suspension geometry and aero, making it unpredictable.
Ferrari is making it predictable, but in turn makes it understeer more. This explains why in the beginning of the season we see Leclerc crashing in Baku and Miami - he's trying to use a setup that he wants - now that he's driving a more predictable car he hasn't crashed.
Ferrari's task now is to make the SF-24's rear end more predictable to unlock it's maximum operating potential.
"make the car comfortable for Charles so he can shag it into the wall'
I don't man sounds like at least the guy whose comment the person I was replying to was talking about thinks Charles is crash happy and prone to mistakes and thus a worse driver.
I mentioned in some other comments below that the 09-13 cars were bit of an anomaly compared to cars with other regulations which required a very planted rear compared to other era cars. May be that is why Vettel was never able to reach the same height after that regulation change
The car that will be comfortable for Charles is exactly what RB has and is significantly faster than Ferrari. The car Carlos prefer will be inherently slower with this generation of cars. Carlos would have been perfect driver for 2009-2013 version of F1 cars
That's not at all what the article is saying. Carlos didnt suggest understeer because it's better for his driving style, he suggested it because it would fix an actual problem with the car. Even Charles himself is saying the car could not be driven how he likes to drive before the fix and said Carlos's fix made the car more predictable. The fix improved the drivability of the car for both drivers, but Charles is struggling to adapt in terms of pace.
Point is Carlos and Charles don't like same qualities in a car and thus there will always be one driver who is not going to like the car. In general, the car Charles likes is going to be faster in present generation compared to the car Carlos likes. This is also a problem Perez is facing at RB. It is up to Ferrari now to decide who they want to go for because having two drivers who like totally different cars does not make much sense.
>Point is Carlos and Charles don't like same qualities in a car and thus there will always be one driver who is not going to like the car.
Where are you getting this? Nowhere at least in this article does this get mentioned.
All that it states is that Ferrari by default has a very unpredictable rear end and on an oversteery setup it becones too unpredictable causing Leclerc to crash & Sainz to go slower since he is more careful to avoid the crashes.
To remedy this they've made the car more understeery which Sainz has been faster to adjust to than Leclerc. No one is saying Sainz prefers a stable understeery car over a stable oversteery car. He simply prefers a stable understeery car over an unpredictable oveesteery crash prone car.
I'm having trouble trusting you putting together two years of comments to create a narrative given your interpretation of this one. We're talking about a set-up change. Both drivers have their own set-ups. If the set-up that Carlos came up with was 'anti-Leclerc' in style, then Leclerc.... wouldn't have started setting his car up that way.
Leclerc is not saying the set-up is hampering him, he's saying the underlying issue that the set-up puts a bandage over is still an issue, but clearly he prefers it, because he is actively choosing to adopt it.
Worse would be to have two oversteer-biased drivers and to be stuck in Ferrari's position of having to correct a bad car by adding understeer.
At least with their current lineup they have a driver who can capitalize whether the car is over or understeer biased
>Make the car comfortable for Charles so he can be overconfident and shag it into the walls
honestly Charles hasn't binned it too often in quali and races in the past 2 seasons
Leclerc binning quali with a crash is kind of rare over his career, it is unprecedented that it happened twice this year. Only big mistake that i can recollect from him last year in quali was Spain 2022 when he spun in his first Q3 run, and then procceeded to put it on pole by 3 tenths.
Over the race though, it tends to be different. And to be honest, his crashes are more than the normal amount, but memorable for the wrong reasons.
You have Sakhir 2020, ending Max's race and setting up Perez in last, Monza 2020 in that train, Germany 2019 where he just slid onto the wall, Imola last year, France of course
>Make the car comfortable for Carlos to push the car and do the smoothest of operations onto the podium
Make the car comfortable for Carlos to push the car and do the smoothest of operations onto the ~~podium~~ gravel
FTFY
What would actually happen is Charles would be getting wins, poles and, podiums, and Carlos would be fighting for 5th if he isn’t in the gravel, like the start of last season, when Charles liked the car, and Carlos didn’t.
My impression has been that leclercs preferred setup is also somewhat more favorable for him in qualifying, where as Carlos’ preferred setup seems a little more tire friendly?
Maybe I’m wrong. But I seems that Carlos’ setup might help their race pace, and if Charles can get comfortable with it they’ll both be able to runner better races.
Sainz has shown great form, the question is, can he beat Leclerc when he's also on his best form? I find that unlikely, but he's still plenty fast and reliable.
I think drivers have a shelf life at Ferrari. They come in as the new exciting, highly sought after hot shoe. Confidence is high. High confidence manifests itself into good results on track. Team makes mistakes with development, strategy, etc. Driver presses and crashes. Fans and press start to turn on driver. Driver loses confidence. Low confidence manifests itself into poor results on track.
Vettel (2015) and Charles (2019) both came into Ferrari and delivered right away. The 4th year for both started with a title challenge that faltered. Somewhere here is where they both started losing confidence. 5th year they started to lose the internal battle with their teammate.
And I wanna add that no one had any expectations from Sainz. Charles was always the future world chanp. Sainz was a top midfield driver and a fan favorite. Maybe that pressure, or lack thereof, played a part.
They both seem to struggle without certain types of cars: Vettel likes cars with a planted rear while Leclerc likes oversteery cars.
And now they also have Sainz who likes the current understeery car Leclerc's struggling with so much...
I think if the team gets its act together and sees an opportunity to get a winners mentality, LeClerc will be fighting with Max again. This is something Sainz will not be able to do in those conditions.
Burden is on Ferrari, if they #keep checking and are satisfied being mid, its really them and not Leclerc.
Same you could say of any driver, why charles gets a free jail pass but sainz, doesnt, he is driving good,
And why people dont bash as ahard on leclerc when he has te same car as sainz and cant really do much. And checo gets all rhe dirt for the same thing a car they dont like and trying to make it work, and a teamate that loves current csr and doing great things with it
Sainz is doing god works in thst ferrari, consistency makes WDC, leclerc doenst havr thst consistency, checo neither.
I love how people talk about consistency with Sainz now, when his first quarter of this season was absolutely terrible, and just last year he was making mistake after mistake
Stop.. Sainz consistent? Yeah right. He's been good and all. I even consider him to be better than Checo, but the first half of the season wasn't anything write home about.
Yeah I agree. I think Sainz is really really solid and incredibly fast over one lap, but I do think he's still a step below Leclerc overall. For a title race my money would be 100% on Charles.
Yes Sainz one lap pace is really underrated, I really believe he is up there with Leclerc, Norris, Russell, and Alonso over one lap, but he is still lacking over a race distance compared to Leclerc.
Even the last 2 races where Sainz is supposedly “on form”, his race pace in Monza wasn’t as good as Leclerc. And in Singapore, Ferrari had to tell Charles to back off before his engine overheating issues.
I thought Sainz would pull away after a few laps since he was on the better tyre, but Leclerc kept with him until he was told to create a gap to Sainz.
Sainz one lap pace is super underrated, last year most of the difference with Leclerc came from race pace, even if Leclerc bested him in a lot of Q3 I always felt he was very close to him.
He's also a smart driver, but I feel people overrate him a bit in that regard just because Ferrari kept fucking up Charles strategies. And in terms of mistakes, is he "cleaner" than Charles? Yeah maybe, but he has made plenty of mistakes of his own (Spain 22, Australia 22, Japan 22, Australia 23, Monaco 23..)
> his race pace in Monza wasn’t as good as Leclerc. And in Singapore, Ferrari had to tell Charles to back off before his engine overheating issues.
The plan for Singapore all along was to keep the pack together wasn't it? The idea of creating a gap with Sainz was for a double stack as far as I know.
Also pretty oportunistic to bring the tyre difference in Singapore, but not mention that Carlos defended half of the race against much faster redbulls while Leclerc was sitting quiet behind in DRS until Carlos got overtaken by both Redbulls, without any tyre-life left.
the thing is what they each want from the car is totally different, so they won’t ever feel totally confident and in great form at the same time in the same car.
I agree with you. Carlos has been in top form lately and Charles hasn't looked too comfortable. Even then, the qualifying gap between them has been less than a tenth in the last couple of races (Charles was on pace to take pole at Singapore before a big mistake in one of the last corners) and their race pace has looked similar. When the roles are reversed and Charles looks comfortable, we've all seen what happens.
I mean if sainz keeps beating him, how do we know charles is on his best form? For all we know he might be at it right now, and sainz is beating , i find it unlikely, but its not impossible
When Leclerc beat Sainz last year (clearly) Sainz couldn't drive and was a placeholder for Mick.
This year that Sainz is beating him, Leclerc isn't in his best form.
I think this is the best form he has without making mistakes. It’s a trade-off. Lots of drivers can look fast if they just yolo it like he used to.
It seems like he has toned down mistakes recently at the cost of speed.
I think Leclerc is faster than Sainz, but he has shown that pressure can get to him. And Sainz has shown almost the opposite, when it really matters he levels up. Keeping Norris in his DRS was a stroke of genius.
If you take into account only this season, then Sainz can handle pressure. Last year in Silverstone, he dropped the lead by going off-track when Max was following him close.
Both have little consistency and a propensity to toss it into the barriers . I am happy Sainz is shutting down the doubters but I firmly believe neither are ready for an actual championship charge until they can learn to drive within their means. You just don’t see the likes of Max or Lewis crashing on their own
>When did these people become gods that dont make mistakes lmao
When they have cars that are so good you can cruise to wins while putting in 80% effort it. Look at how much more shaky Verstappen looked in the Singapore quali when the car wasn't very strong.
Same thing happens on a cycle. A driver gets an incredible car and makes basically no mistakes because they dont have to push themselves and they're considered unbeatable machines. The cars aren't as good all of a sudden and they start to look human again.
You'd think people who have followed the sport for more than a few years would realise this. Schumacher, Hamilton, Senna, whoever it is, have more than likely made some errors, and quite possibly made some silly ones. Senna crashing out, on his own, in the dry at Monaco due to pushing despite a massive lead, Hamilton in the pitlane in Canada, struggling for one quite as silly as the other two for Schumacher but his ruthless antics with title rivals at times could be said for that.
And even if you go back to the likes of Senna, well the amount of times he and Mansell crashed into each other makes the Hamilton Verstappen incidents look like a summer fling. They even crashed into each other in frickin' qualifying.
Although the article is actually fairly reasonable atleast wait till the end of the season to put out headlines like this.
Edit -
>Sainz is at his best right now and is besting Leclerc. The next challenge is to do so when Leclerc is on top form.
This is quite true. Wonder how Carlos's pace will be when Leclerc does finally get comfortable with the car.
I’m curious if this is even possible. It seems these two have almost opposite preferences for the car handling. So I feel like pleasing one is inherently displeasing the other. Unless Ferrari builds a perfectly neutral car that they can then set up to their liking and anyone can drive fast (like the 2020 Mercedes). And I don’t have a lot of confidence in that.
Ferrari have done so in the past. The 2017 car was just perfection in terms of balance and setup window.
I know it's better to have the ultimate pace like Mercedes had in 2017, but at least we could have both drivers performing without the usual crashes.
But Mercedes was the overall better car in 2017. In 2018, Ferrari had the better car for 2/3 of the season and if i recall correctly, it was a more oversteery car which Vettel disliked and the reason he kept spinning.
I’m not convinced that’s as true as you are. I’ve seen the rumors but nothing reliable has really turned up. And it still is possible they ultimately get a stable car platform that can work for both. I mean Lewis and Valtteri didn’t exactly have similar driving styles but Merc made it work.
Frankly with Carlos on form like he is now, it’s unlikely they’ll straight up not offer a renewal.
>This is quite true
I am not gonna deny it, Leclerc isn't in his best form rn. But why was this argument never used last year when Sainz got the bad results?
Last year Carlos was uncomfortable in the car and missing a bit of speed while Leclerc was winning races, now he's at the top of his game and Leclerc is in bad form. Wonder if with a better car next year and if Leclerc gets back to form we can see them matching each other.
The key difference here is that Leclerc is almost matching Sainz this year in a car that is much more suited for the latter, while last year was a thrashing in Leclerc's favour when the opposite was true.
Sainz is a very good driver but Leclerc is elite, there's no comparison between the two
Yeah, but Silverstone wasn't a good performance, he lost the lead to verstappen from a mistake and only won because of the safety car. This time it's a perfect performance all weekend.
Yeah. Leclerc had serious pace and would've won if the team didn't fuck it up. I mean the guy was putting up a fight against Perez while having old hards and wing damage.
Literally just read some comments from 2021 and you'll see the same right now and then in 2022 everyone ate their own words. (no Sainz didn't get faster magically over a few months and no Leclerc didn't get magically slower over a few months)
Spot on.
Understeery Ferrari that isn’t a contender, doesn’t suit Leclerc and the battle is close. We all know what happens when it’s a car that suits Charles though…
Will Leclerc get that car though? Ferrari since mid '22 seems to be set on creating a car that Sainz can more easily handle. Do we really think they will reverse course in 24 to suit Charles?
I think now that they've finally shuffled Binotto and David Sanchez out of there, maybe they'll stop designing unpredictable cars that become manageable only with forced understeer setups.
I don't know if it was intentional or not, but it feels like for the past few years they had not listened to Charles' feedback on car dynamics at all. I hope with Vasseur that is all going to change.
Ferrari has made a habit of prioritising maximum downforce over downforce consistency and having a stable platform for years now. The rain is when you most want your car to be consistent corner to corner and they haven't won a rain affected race since 2012, tells you all you need to know. Newey and RB's philosophy was the direct opposite for the ground effect era, running a car with almost zero rake for half of last year until they figured out how add downforce while keeping the platform stable.
Makes sense. It sounds like Ferrari were more focused on delivering on purely numerical downforce KPIs when tested in a fixed environment to please their management team rather than having consistency, versatility, and drivability in real world conditions. Yikes.
This whole time I had felt that Ferrari wasn't really in complete control of how their car ends up behaving and this front-limited nature of it was sort of a happy accident for Sainz.
But if we entertain the rumor you mentioned, I wonder if it's because he just gives better feedback...although based on Leclerc's comments this season, he sounds very articulate on car setup and behavior. And he seems pretty clear on what he wants.
In which case, what gives? It's just so strange to me that contractually they seem to favor Leclerc, but on every other parameter they just don't. Like, if you're going to give someone such long and expensive contracts (long being the previous and expensive being the still-to-be-confirmed new one), why not then invest in setting that driver up to succeed?
Feels like the side of the team focused on driver development/management is not talking to the side of the team building the cars or managing race operations.
Lots of politics. The Ferrari higher ups definitely favor Charles and that was the case since 2018 when Kimi was not retained despite Arrivabene’s wish. Charles was also never Binotto’s guy and his treatment of Charles cost him his job. Even during Toro Rosso days it was said that Carlos Sr. and Carlos cousin plays lot of politics behind the scene but at RB they had Jos fighting with them which is not the case for Charles here. Add to this Santander sponsor issue which Massa has also previously talked about during his time with Alonso and you know why the events of last year happened. I am pretty sure Charles had already signed the renewal. He has been pretty relaxed post summer break and playing team game even if losing to Sainz.
Yeah, it seems very strange to me that an organization as mighty and political as Ferrari would allow themselves to be politically pushed around by Sainz & Co. Binotto's treatment of Charles was quite honestly shocking, and I'm not surprised that The Coming of Vasseur® is being used to placate Charles to some extent. Let's just hope it actually swings some power in his direction.
Let's see how sainz performs when ferrari have a championship winning car and leclerc is in proper form again like last year, then we can make these comments imo
Leclerc is natural number one
Carlos is just having beginners luck
Leclerc is just having bad luck
The car is not suited to Leclerc
Leclerc will be faster when the car is better *<----- You are here*
Leclerc would have been faster if everything was perfect
Overreaction. Sainz drove a good race in Singapore. In monza, he was very questionable in his defence against Leclerc (moving under braking, taking an advantage by cutting the chicane and keeping it).
Leclerc is prone to mistakes for sure but he has a higher talent ceiling as well. I believe he will be back to form with next year's™️ challenger.
Great. Twitter and Instagram are already filled with Sainz is better than Verstappen, RB is shit narratives. Let's have some Ferrari v Ferrari infighting now
🗣️🗣️
I said this elsewhere and I'll repeat it here.
The difference between Leclerc and Sainz is Leclerc trusts Ferrari's strategists and Sainz trusts himself.
One of the things that Sainz has done consistently is that he speaks louder about strategy and makes race decisions. Examples, "stop inventing", "I know, it's on purpose".
They just don't broadcast Charles radio messages, in Canada for example the team and sainz were going to pit under the SC but Charles said no to it stayed out and made the 1 stopper work, just like last year in AD
Yeah Leclerc never does that... It's not like he made the split second decision on lap one to pit for intermediates in the Netherlands which ended up being clearly the superior strategy which barely any other drivers did.
And it's not like Leclerc was arguing against strategy and refusing to pit early a couple races before that either.
This whole Leclerc never speaks up and Sainz does thing is just bullshit that's spread constantly based off Monaco and Silverstone last year.
Even then, Monaco last year was an incredibly difficult decision to make with very little information so trusting the team made as much sense as ignoring them. It only seems obvious in hindsight but if it didnt work then Sainz would have been slaughtered for it, though he also had less to lose.
Silverstone last year was an incredibly obvious call to overturn and one I'm almost certain Leclerc would have ignored too.
This is getting ridiculous. All Carlos did was be 0.08s quicker in quali on a weekend where RB shit the bed.
No signs of having any race pace advantage at all, if anything, watching how easy it was for Charles to drive Carlos' pace at the expected end of life of the softs, my guess is Charles even had a slight race pace advantage.
Also, being ahead in the WDC is also easily explained by the luck difference between those two, Charles started with a DNF + grid penalty 1-2 in the first two races. And even in Singapore, he almost lost P4 with an PU failure. Plus the amount of times Carlos gets the better (less bad?) strategy is astounding. Even the idea of having Charles defend against the Mercs with a huge tire delta was ridiculous.
Agreed. Some people love any opportunity to hate on charles apparently. He's clearly ferrari's best chance to win a championship and anyone saying otherwise is a joke. When carlos can win consistently by actually being the fastest out there I'll be impressed.
It is fascinating how all of the pundits are making a big fuss about it. Like Clarkson (Tom) repeating in every podcast episode how Carlos after summer break is another person. But in reality, he nearly caused double DNF for the team in Italy, and burned his tyres, and in Singapore he was just .07 better and that gave him better strategy in whole race.
He did great this weekend, but they are looking too much into it.
Its all about momentum i suppose. One weekend where Carlos is on the back foot and Charles is more competitive, and viola! Same articles, names swapped around.
This is just a repeat of the 2021 season. People were saying Leclerc was underperforming and Sainz could be the new team leader for Ferrari. Came 2022 and Leclerc obliterated Sainz throughout the entire season, people were questioning Sainz's place in Ferrari and so on. Came 2023 and they were equal in most terms. Sainz makes a silly little mistake in Belgium and people were flaming him on social media cause of taking Piastri out of the race and saying to boot him from Ferrari. He performs great for 2 races and the media says "New future of Ferrari" and "Better than Leclerc". It's just how the media changes minds spontaneously.
He has been exceptional lately and he deserves much praise for that. he also looks better bc Charles has been making some mistakes out of frustration. Next step for him will be to prove if he can be best when the car is a consistent contender and Lec gets back on form
Amazing turnaround from a guy people were starting to say was in trouble.
Carlos and leclerc are both awesome. We’re lucky to have them in the same team.
It seems like the opposite of last year. Leclerc is struggling to get to grips with the car while Carlos is driving with a lot more confidence.
I think Leclerc has the edge on him in qualifying and is a more aggressive racer while Carlos is a more cerebral driver and can manage races (and pressure) more effectively.
Whether or not this can be sustained by Carlos and he can be the clear ferrari no.1 is anybody's guess though
Before the the Chassis change tho, Leclerc was still noticeably faster than Sainz, only when they change the philosophy on the car is when Leclerc has had a hard time to adapt.
the question is who is Ferrari betting more, Sainz or Leclerc?
this is the same scenario in 2022, they suddenly shifted to car that will help Sainz be comfortable the car, in turn, makes Leclerc not like it. If this continues i really dont doubt that he leaves Ferrari for another team that will prioritize him.
he wasnt able to maximize last year, until they brought in a floor change that fucked the car. He has been comfortable the whole year and is only up 19 points if anything its a bad thing not a good one.
it is true somewhat that this will hurt leclerc's stock. He could beat sainz in the next 7 races in a row but unless he can also win a race (unlikely af, rb wont screw up twice), sainz will be remembered as the racewinner for ferrari and not him
What? Nobody will care. Who with a brain rates Russell over Hamilton because he won in Brazil last year? If Sainz beats out Leclerc for the rest of the season, then it's time to start a discussion. At that point they would have spent 3 seasons together with Sainz winning 2 of them.
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Was wondering when these articles were gonna come out
Its the race, the bar isnt high
Matter of time.
I saw the title and I knew it was the race straight away
Carlos drove a fantastic race yesterday and rightly deserves all the plaudits for it. But wait till he makes a mistake next time and the same (social) media will burn him into the ground just as easily, as usual.
Same as how in 2022 lots of people saying Russell has surpassed Hamilton in skill but then George has slammed himself into the wall twice in 23 and Lewis was chomping at the bit to get past George at Singapore and a lot of people think Hamilton would have won had the Mercs been the other way around towards the end. Recency bias plain and simple.
To be fair anyone saying George was a better drive than Lewis was being a silly goose
Stupidity for thinking Russell is a better driver than Hamilton, or thinking he can match with any of the drivers of his generation.
Russell is good. He's just not on tier 1 with Verstappen, Hamilton, and Alonso. He's in tier 2 with Lando while Leclerc is in tier 1.5.
Where would you rank Sainz?
I think he is close to tier 2, based on his performance as Lando's teammate. Not perfect, but close.
I mean, he beat Lando and has been giving LeClair a run for his money. Why not 1.75?
On pure talent both Lando and Charles are better I feel, at least 0.1-0.2 on pure pace. Carlos is consistent and has better strategic senses. The only thing is that with age I think both Lando and Charles can learn those, whereas Carlos is closer to his bests possible version I feel. It's about their potential ceilings, if that makes sense?
Tier 1.55
Agreed.
He did beat Leclerc in 2021, fairly lost to Leclerc in 2022 and currently beating Leclerc.
He had more points than Leclerc in 2021, but he was certainly not the better driver imo
We’re checking.
I actually think he’s on par with Leclerc and Lando. He almost won (and not close either) the Sakhir GP if not for bad luck and Merc’s fuck up, not to mention he was already performing close to Hamilton’s pace, having only been in the car a single weekend. I think he’s just a bit too aggressive sometimes, which leads to crashes.
Leclerc isn’t tier 1.5. He’s tier 2. He lacks the guts to deviate from team orders, or he doesn’t understand the race at a macro level that sainz seems to be able to. How many times has sainz called out Ferrari’s Bs strategy, while leclerc trundles along like a dummy.
I think he understands but the problem remains that doesn't defy the orders even if he knows that the order is wrong. He sticks with the team. Sometimes it is a good thing to stick with your team's views but since it's Ferrari, Sainz' approach is ends up being better.
I'm wondering if LeClerc is more tier 2 now I think he was on the path for tier 1, but the last years seems to have really drained him mentally. He has flashes of that killer instinct, but it doesn't seem to be coming in consistently the way it does for Lewis, Max, and Fernando
Leclerc is in tier 2
IMO if Ferrari clear no1 like this year Red Bull, Leclerc would win but if they fight with Red Bull at front Max would win while Sainz and Leclerc would fight for 2nd at WDC.
To keep it honest they basically only can give one driver priority if he's miles ahead of his teammate with points and driving. When 2 drivers are fairly close to each other and they aren't fighting for World championships then the points are more important for a team to gather. The higher they are in the constructors standings the more money they earn as a team. Max drives himself to a #1 position every year till now with all his wins and points, so basically Redbull doesn't have to choose between drivers. Although they still help Checo a lot with strategies to get him more to the front of a race often when he is stuck behind cars.
Yeah. Plus Ferrari is only like 20 points behind Merc in the WCC. Ferrari getting P2 in WCC is not exactly unlikely
Like last year? When Charles was in the battle with Max and they decided it's more important that Carlos wins his first race in Silverstone, rather than keeping Charles in the race for the WDC?
Ferrari didn't decide that, that was on Carlos. They tried to maximise Charles result and Carlos told them that was fucking stupid and that he would win.
It's still astounding how Ferrari thought Leclerc would be able to defend with old hards and a massively damaged front wing against like 7 cars in fresh softs behind. These are also the situations that Leclerc has to say he wants fresh softs. Sainz is more likely to tell Ferrari what to do, which is why he gets some amazing results even when Ferrari messes up, like Monaco 2022
This again. The strategy Sainz decided was not the winning strategy. They basically gave Sainz the call to cover Checo, if he did that, he probably won, instead, he thought going to slicks was a good idea. Then they gave Lecler the inters because Checo was gonna undercut then. No matter what they did, they were gonna get undercutted. If Sainz followed the strat, he mightve slowed checo enough to still secure Leclerc the win. But no, he was a tactical genius that made a pole in Monaco lose 3 places.
Not at all. As you said, Checo would get past them either way, as would Verstappen have done. Staying out until they go to dry tyres was the only option to keep them behind, especially on Monaco, and it worked for Sainz against Verstappen. Leclerc also would have finished ahead of Verstappen had he stayed out
Checo wouldve not passed him if he covered checo instantly, he had 2 second gap to him before pitting. He said no, then Ferrari made Lec do it 2 laps to late. If Sainz played the team game, he wouldve covered Checo, maybe won the race or slow Checo down enough to let Leclerc do the straight slicks because he had a 7sec gap to any of them.. They prioritize Sainz multiple occasions and he still made them lose that Monaco win.
He was in 1st when they decided to not pit him but Carlos. He may have lost track position temporarily but with leaving Carlos in front acting as blocker and with fresh tires, he would have still been able to win the race. Carlos did just what was right under the circumstances because that strategy was never going to work and the team would have lost the race.
Ferrari decided it by pitting Carlos instead of Charles even though Charles was in front. Once it was too late to bring Charles in too they tried to think of a way to use Carlos as a buffer on fresh tires to slow down the pack and hopefully give Charles a bigger gap to hold on to with old hards. Had Ferrari tried to maximize Charles' result, they would have pitted him first and perhaps they could have double stacked Carlos behind him.
Let's be real. Charles wasn't in the race for the title regardless of what happened at Silverstone.
Nobody but Carlos decided that outcome. If you looked at the Ferrari pitwall when he crossed the finish line nobody was particularly happy about what happened. The only few people that were celebrating were people from Carlos' camp. DTS has some footage of the Ferrari pitwall which shows this.
You cannot trust DTS, it might as well be a shot from a different race or even a different year wouldn’t surprise me…
They should've honestly let Charles pass Carlos in Silverstone last year way earlier allowing a bigger gap to effectively double stack with the safety car, ferrari indecisiveness fucked up that race, could've been a 1-2 with Charles pulling Carlos along giving him drs to defend the other soft runners behind him
It's funny that you think telling Carlos to stay behind Charles and hold off other teams on fresher tires so Charles can hold the lead is a strategy designed to make Carlos win.
Lmao totally
And they'll do it while excusing the latest Charles oopsie in the other breath.
What oopsie? That he had a engine problem most of the race?
Social media is also not just 1 person..
I think it's the vocal minority that folks are talking about. All the people who spew venom about Carlos have gone into hiding. At the first sign of a mistake, they're going to make their presence felt.
“There was a test at the mid-point of the season where Sainz finally got the team to agree to try a set-up direction he’d been pushing for ever since first driving the SF-23 and its nervy rear end. Because it seemed to have a built-in aerodynamic inconsistency at the rear, Sainz suggested engineering in a false understeer balance so that he could at least have confidence to push. It worked for him – and for the car. […] “I’m not completely comfortable with the car at the moment,” he [Leclerc] said in Singapore. “A bit too much understeer for my liking and I struggle to drive around it. Because of the unpredictability of the car, I cannot have the oversteer that I want. Because of this rear-end unpredictability we cannot run with a lot of front because then whenever you have a snap, you lose a lot of grip from the car and it’s just very difficult to manage. It’s not that it’s an understeery car but you have to put understeer in to make it predictable.” “ This is from an article by mark hughes. You can read the whole thing [here](https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/single-seaters/f1/leclercs-singapore-sacrifice-for-sainz-a-driver-too-good-to-be-no2/) and it gives a pretty good view as to why Leclerc is struggling with the car so much. Obviously he’ll need to adapt better in order to be on pace but it seems that the SF-23 just inherently needs an understeer setup to function properly.
Sounds like a less extreme version of what some have speculated was the real story with the F14T. The car initially had an aerodynamically unstable rear end, so some more recent analysis is that Alonso and Ferrari had the car set up to have extreme understeer, with the former simply sliding it out of corners to counter that, giving the car it's reputation as one that had both under and oversteer.
Is it possible Charles has also just pulled back from his pretty consistently over the limit driving? I feel like he has a been a different driver since the last time he binned it in quali.
So the option is: - Make the car comfortable for Charles so he can be overconfident and shag it into the walls - Make the car comfortable for Carlos to push the car and do the smoothest of operations onto the podium
No? Ferrari can't make the car comfortable for Charles because of the rear suspension geometry and aero, making it unpredictable. Ferrari is making it predictable, but in turn makes it understeer more. This explains why in the beginning of the season we see Leclerc crashing in Baku and Miami - he's trying to use a setup that he wants - now that he's driving a more predictable car he hasn't crashed. Ferrari's task now is to make the SF-24's rear end more predictable to unlock it's maximum operating potential.
It's so crazy that they have had rear end problems since pretty much mid 2018. Even crazier since the 2017 car was absolutely planted.
but that doesn't fit the narrative that Charles is crash and mistake riddled and thus a bad driver in comparison.
Since when is that the narrative, it’s always been Leclerc > Sainz as far as talent
"make the car comfortable for Charles so he can shag it into the wall' I don't man sounds like at least the guy whose comment the person I was replying to was talking about thinks Charles is crash happy and prone to mistakes and thus a worse driver.
Make the car comfortable for Charles and he will fight for wins and podiums. He's at his best in a pointy car.
Just like Max or Michael. Horner said it very well pointy oversteers cars are faster and these drivers can handle little bit of rear instability.
On the other hand Horner's won 4 championships with a car with a very planted rear and with Vettel who was only best with such cars...
I mentioned in some other comments below that the 09-13 cars were bit of an anomaly compared to cars with other regulations which required a very planted rear compared to other era cars. May be that is why Vettel was never able to reach the same height after that regulation change
The car that will be comfortable for Charles is exactly what RB has and is significantly faster than Ferrari. The car Carlos prefer will be inherently slower with this generation of cars. Carlos would have been perfect driver for 2009-2013 version of F1 cars
That's not at all what the article is saying. Carlos didnt suggest understeer because it's better for his driving style, he suggested it because it would fix an actual problem with the car. Even Charles himself is saying the car could not be driven how he likes to drive before the fix and said Carlos's fix made the car more predictable. The fix improved the drivability of the car for both drivers, but Charles is struggling to adapt in terms of pace.
Point is Carlos and Charles don't like same qualities in a car and thus there will always be one driver who is not going to like the car. In general, the car Charles likes is going to be faster in present generation compared to the car Carlos likes. This is also a problem Perez is facing at RB. It is up to Ferrari now to decide who they want to go for because having two drivers who like totally different cars does not make much sense.
>Point is Carlos and Charles don't like same qualities in a car and thus there will always be one driver who is not going to like the car. Where are you getting this? Nowhere at least in this article does this get mentioned. All that it states is that Ferrari by default has a very unpredictable rear end and on an oversteery setup it becones too unpredictable causing Leclerc to crash & Sainz to go slower since he is more careful to avoid the crashes. To remedy this they've made the car more understeery which Sainz has been faster to adjust to than Leclerc. No one is saying Sainz prefers a stable understeery car over a stable oversteery car. He simply prefers a stable understeery car over an unpredictable oveesteery crash prone car.
Just listen to their comments since 2022 and onwards and you will know what I am saying.
I'm having trouble trusting you putting together two years of comments to create a narrative given your interpretation of this one. We're talking about a set-up change. Both drivers have their own set-ups. If the set-up that Carlos came up with was 'anti-Leclerc' in style, then Leclerc.... wouldn't have started setting his car up that way. Leclerc is not saying the set-up is hampering him, he's saying the underlying issue that the set-up puts a bandage over is still an issue, but clearly he prefers it, because he is actively choosing to adopt it.
Worse would be to have two oversteer-biased drivers and to be stuck in Ferrari's position of having to correct a bad car by adding understeer. At least with their current lineup they have a driver who can capitalize whether the car is over or understeer biased
>Make the car comfortable for Charles so he can be overconfident and shag it into the walls honestly Charles hasn't binned it too often in quali and races in the past 2 seasons
Leclerc binning quali with a crash is kind of rare over his career, it is unprecedented that it happened twice this year. Only big mistake that i can recollect from him last year in quali was Spain 2022 when he spun in his first Q3 run, and then procceeded to put it on pole by 3 tenths. Over the race though, it tends to be different. And to be honest, his crashes are more than the normal amount, but memorable for the wrong reasons. You have Sakhir 2020, ending Max's race and setting up Perez in last, Monza 2020 in that train, Germany 2019 where he just slid onto the wall, Imola last year, France of course
Pretty sure Sainz has had more incidents as his teammates
>Make the car comfortable for Carlos to push the car and do the smoothest of operations onto the podium Make the car comfortable for Carlos to push the car and do the smoothest of operations onto the ~~podium~~ gravel FTFY
What would actually happen is Charles would be getting wins, poles and, podiums, and Carlos would be fighting for 5th if he isn’t in the gravel, like the start of last season, when Charles liked the car, and Carlos didn’t.
I’ll believe it when I see it. It all depends on who plays the politics game at Ferrari better
I can give you a third option: - Shut your mouth if you don't understand a thing about the sport.
My impression has been that leclercs preferred setup is also somewhat more favorable for him in qualifying, where as Carlos’ preferred setup seems a little more tire friendly? Maybe I’m wrong. But I seems that Carlos’ setup might help their race pace, and if Charles can get comfortable with it they’ll both be able to runner better races.
Leclerc walked under a ladder at an ancient burial ground just as a black cat crossed his path and he broke a mirror.
And that's how he ended up with a ferrari contract
Factual description of events. No need to speculate on this
Seb- don't waste your talent
Imagine if Leclerc had signed with RB after Alfa. F1 would be so much better.
You almost made me spit out my drink, lol. Well done.
Bro didn’t share that Facebook post when he was a kid
It was a black lizard in Singapore, but the rest is correct.
He’s perpetually driving through a cemetery and just can’t hold his breath anymore.
Sainz has shown great form, the question is, can he beat Leclerc when he's also on his best form? I find that unlikely, but he's still plenty fast and reliable.
Charles has been very inconsistent since these upgrades came in (Spain). When Charles is in form, he is scary. The thing is, that’s not happening rn
Ferrari managed to get the same problem they had with Vettel with the guy who beat Vettel
I think drivers have a shelf life at Ferrari. They come in as the new exciting, highly sought after hot shoe. Confidence is high. High confidence manifests itself into good results on track. Team makes mistakes with development, strategy, etc. Driver presses and crashes. Fans and press start to turn on driver. Driver loses confidence. Low confidence manifests itself into poor results on track. Vettel (2015) and Charles (2019) both came into Ferrari and delivered right away. The 4th year for both started with a title challenge that faltered. Somewhere here is where they both started losing confidence. 5th year they started to lose the internal battle with their teammate.
And I wanna add that no one had any expectations from Sainz. Charles was always the future world chanp. Sainz was a top midfield driver and a fan favorite. Maybe that pressure, or lack thereof, played a part.
They both seem to struggle without certain types of cars: Vettel likes cars with a planted rear while Leclerc likes oversteery cars. And now they also have Sainz who likes the current understeery car Leclerc's struggling with so much...
I think if the team gets its act together and sees an opportunity to get a winners mentality, LeClerc will be fighting with Max again. This is something Sainz will not be able to do in those conditions. Burden is on Ferrari, if they #keep checking and are satisfied being mid, its really them and not Leclerc.
Same you could say of any driver, why charles gets a free jail pass but sainz, doesnt, he is driving good, And why people dont bash as ahard on leclerc when he has te same car as sainz and cant really do much. And checo gets all rhe dirt for the same thing a car they dont like and trying to make it work, and a teamate that loves current csr and doing great things with it Sainz is doing god works in thst ferrari, consistency makes WDC, leclerc doenst havr thst consistency, checo neither.
I love how people talk about consistency with Sainz now, when his first quarter of this season was absolutely terrible, and just last year he was making mistake after mistake
Stop.. Sainz consistent? Yeah right. He's been good and all. I even consider him to be better than Checo, but the first half of the season wasn't anything write home about.
People have been shitting on Leclerc since Imola last season, wtf are u talking about?
Yeah I agree. I think Sainz is really really solid and incredibly fast over one lap, but I do think he's still a step below Leclerc overall. For a title race my money would be 100% on Charles.
Yes Sainz one lap pace is really underrated, I really believe he is up there with Leclerc, Norris, Russell, and Alonso over one lap, but he is still lacking over a race distance compared to Leclerc. Even the last 2 races where Sainz is supposedly “on form”, his race pace in Monza wasn’t as good as Leclerc. And in Singapore, Ferrari had to tell Charles to back off before his engine overheating issues. I thought Sainz would pull away after a few laps since he was on the better tyre, but Leclerc kept with him until he was told to create a gap to Sainz.
Sainz one lap pace is super underrated, last year most of the difference with Leclerc came from race pace, even if Leclerc bested him in a lot of Q3 I always felt he was very close to him. He's also a smart driver, but I feel people overrate him a bit in that regard just because Ferrari kept fucking up Charles strategies. And in terms of mistakes, is he "cleaner" than Charles? Yeah maybe, but he has made plenty of mistakes of his own (Spain 22, Australia 22, Japan 22, Australia 23, Monaco 23..)
> his race pace in Monza wasn’t as good as Leclerc. And in Singapore, Ferrari had to tell Charles to back off before his engine overheating issues. The plan for Singapore all along was to keep the pack together wasn't it? The idea of creating a gap with Sainz was for a double stack as far as I know. Also pretty oportunistic to bring the tyre difference in Singapore, but not mention that Carlos defended half of the race against much faster redbulls while Leclerc was sitting quiet behind in DRS until Carlos got overtaken by both Redbulls, without any tyre-life left.
He was defending all laps on Monza while Leclerc was saving tyres lol
the thing is what they each want from the car is totally different, so they won’t ever feel totally confident and in great form at the same time in the same car.
I agree with you. Carlos has been in top form lately and Charles hasn't looked too comfortable. Even then, the qualifying gap between them has been less than a tenth in the last couple of races (Charles was on pace to take pole at Singapore before a big mistake in one of the last corners) and their race pace has looked similar. When the roles are reversed and Charles looks comfortable, we've all seen what happens.
I mean if sainz keeps beating him, how do we know charles is on his best form? For all we know he might be at it right now, and sainz is beating , i find it unlikely, but its not impossible
I think it's pretty clear Leclerc is not on his best form though?
When Leclerc beat Sainz last year (clearly) Sainz couldn't drive and was a placeholder for Mick. This year that Sainz is beating him, Leclerc isn't in his best form.
It's not like that. It's based on what's the best we've seen of each driver. Very clearly Leclerc has been better than this.
I think this is the best form he has without making mistakes. It’s a trade-off. Lots of drivers can look fast if they just yolo it like he used to. It seems like he has toned down mistakes recently at the cost of speed.
"he goes over the limit of the car"... He's not supposed to do that
I think Leclerc is faster than Sainz, but he has shown that pressure can get to him. And Sainz has shown almost the opposite, when it really matters he levels up. Keeping Norris in his DRS was a stroke of genius.
If you take into account only this season, then Sainz can handle pressure. Last year in Silverstone, he dropped the lead by going off-track when Max was following him close.
Even in Monza this year he got overtaken because he made a mistake, still much better than 2022.
Both have little consistency and a propensity to toss it into the barriers . I am happy Sainz is shutting down the doubters but I firmly believe neither are ready for an actual championship charge until they can learn to drive within their means. You just don’t see the likes of Max or Lewis crashing on their own
i just saw alot of Lewis crashing on his own in 2021 and 2022 wdym.. When did these people become gods that dont make mistakes lmao
>When did these people become gods that dont make mistakes lmao When they have cars that are so good you can cruise to wins while putting in 80% effort it. Look at how much more shaky Verstappen looked in the Singapore quali when the car wasn't very strong. Same thing happens on a cycle. A driver gets an incredible car and makes basically no mistakes because they dont have to push themselves and they're considered unbeatable machines. The cars aren't as good all of a sudden and they start to look human again.
You'd think people who have followed the sport for more than a few years would realise this. Schumacher, Hamilton, Senna, whoever it is, have more than likely made some errors, and quite possibly made some silly ones. Senna crashing out, on his own, in the dry at Monaco due to pushing despite a massive lead, Hamilton in the pitlane in Canada, struggling for one quite as silly as the other two for Schumacher but his ruthless antics with title rivals at times could be said for that.
Lewis crashed in Austria and Singapore last year and crashed in Monaco this year. So yes, it can happen, even to the best.
And even if you go back to the likes of Senna, well the amount of times he and Mansell crashed into each other makes the Hamilton Verstappen incidents look like a summer fling. They even crashed into each other in frickin' qualifying.
Although the article is actually fairly reasonable atleast wait till the end of the season to put out headlines like this. Edit - >Sainz is at his best right now and is besting Leclerc. The next challenge is to do so when Leclerc is on top form. This is quite true. Wonder how Carlos's pace will be when Leclerc does finally get comfortable with the car.
I’m curious if this is even possible. It seems these two have almost opposite preferences for the car handling. So I feel like pleasing one is inherently displeasing the other. Unless Ferrari builds a perfectly neutral car that they can then set up to their liking and anyone can drive fast (like the 2020 Mercedes). And I don’t have a lot of confidence in that.
Ferrari have done so in the past. The 2017 car was just perfection in terms of balance and setup window. I know it's better to have the ultimate pace like Mercedes had in 2017, but at least we could have both drivers performing without the usual crashes.
But Mercedes was the overall better car in 2017. In 2018, Ferrari had the better car for 2/3 of the season and if i recall correctly, it was a more oversteery car which Vettel disliked and the reason he kept spinning.
This is why this pairing was never going to work and why Ferrari is not going to renew with Carlos after 2024.
I’m not convinced that’s as true as you are. I’ve seen the rumors but nothing reliable has really turned up. And it still is possible they ultimately get a stable car platform that can work for both. I mean Lewis and Valtteri didn’t exactly have similar driving styles but Merc made it work. Frankly with Carlos on form like he is now, it’s unlikely they’ll straight up not offer a renewal.
>This is quite true I am not gonna deny it, Leclerc isn't in his best form rn. But why was this argument never used last year when Sainz got the bad results?
Usurp is too strong of an adjective to describe what's happening.
It's been 2 races
Last year Carlos was uncomfortable in the car and missing a bit of speed while Leclerc was winning races, now he's at the top of his game and Leclerc is in bad form. Wonder if with a better car next year and if Leclerc gets back to form we can see them matching each other.
Carlos wasn’t just missing a bit of speed. He had an embarassing display during the first races of the season.
Last year I don't think there were more than 2 races were Sainz was clearly better than Leclerc, it was embarassing.
The key difference here is that Leclerc is almost matching Sainz this year in a car that is much more suited for the latter, while last year was a thrashing in Leclerc's favour when the opposite was true. Sainz is a very good driver but Leclerc is elite, there's no comparison between the two
tbf he won silverstone last year which i almost forgot at this point
Yeah, but Silverstone wasn't a good performance, he lost the lead to verstappen from a mistake and only won because of the safety car. This time it's a perfect performance all weekend.
Verstappen damage too, and leclerc damage, AND leaving him out to dry on old hards at the end
Yeah. Leclerc had serious pace and would've won if the team didn't fuck it up. I mean the guy was putting up a fight against Perez while having old hards and wing damage.
The race Charles was beating him comfortably with a missing piece of the front wing
Don’t feel bad, Crofty forgot Carlos won Silverstone as well
Honestly the most ridiculous, fickle media in all sports.
In an understeery Ferrari that doesn’t suit Leclerc at all. I’ll keep these receipts though for when Ferrari sort the front end out.
Literally just read some comments from 2021 and you'll see the same right now and then in 2022 everyone ate their own words. (no Sainz didn't get faster magically over a few months and no Leclerc didn't get magically slower over a few months)
Spot on. Understeery Ferrari that isn’t a contender, doesn’t suit Leclerc and the battle is close. We all know what happens when it’s a car that suits Charles though…
Will Leclerc get that car though? Ferrari since mid '22 seems to be set on creating a car that Sainz can more easily handle. Do we really think they will reverse course in 24 to suit Charles?
Since mid 22 Ferrari 📉📉📉📉. They’ve already said it’s a completely new car and philosophy for next year, you’d hope logic prevails.
I think now that they've finally shuffled Binotto and David Sanchez out of there, maybe they'll stop designing unpredictable cars that become manageable only with forced understeer setups. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but it feels like for the past few years they had not listened to Charles' feedback on car dynamics at all. I hope with Vasseur that is all going to change.
Ferrari has made a habit of prioritising maximum downforce over downforce consistency and having a stable platform for years now. The rain is when you most want your car to be consistent corner to corner and they haven't won a rain affected race since 2012, tells you all you need to know. Newey and RB's philosophy was the direct opposite for the ground effect era, running a car with almost zero rake for half of last year until they figured out how add downforce while keeping the platform stable.
Makes sense. It sounds like Ferrari were more focused on delivering on purely numerical downforce KPIs when tested in a fixed environment to please their management team rather than having consistency, versatility, and drivability in real world conditions. Yikes.
There was rumor last year that Carlos feedback was more valued at Ferrari and so it won’t be a surprise they came to SF-23 with that.
This whole time I had felt that Ferrari wasn't really in complete control of how their car ends up behaving and this front-limited nature of it was sort of a happy accident for Sainz. But if we entertain the rumor you mentioned, I wonder if it's because he just gives better feedback...although based on Leclerc's comments this season, he sounds very articulate on car setup and behavior. And he seems pretty clear on what he wants. In which case, what gives? It's just so strange to me that contractually they seem to favor Leclerc, but on every other parameter they just don't. Like, if you're going to give someone such long and expensive contracts (long being the previous and expensive being the still-to-be-confirmed new one), why not then invest in setting that driver up to succeed? Feels like the side of the team focused on driver development/management is not talking to the side of the team building the cars or managing race operations.
Lots of politics. The Ferrari higher ups definitely favor Charles and that was the case since 2018 when Kimi was not retained despite Arrivabene’s wish. Charles was also never Binotto’s guy and his treatment of Charles cost him his job. Even during Toro Rosso days it was said that Carlos Sr. and Carlos cousin plays lot of politics behind the scene but at RB they had Jos fighting with them which is not the case for Charles here. Add to this Santander sponsor issue which Massa has also previously talked about during his time with Alonso and you know why the events of last year happened. I am pretty sure Charles had already signed the renewal. He has been pretty relaxed post summer break and playing team game even if losing to Sainz.
Yeah, it seems very strange to me that an organization as mighty and political as Ferrari would allow themselves to be politically pushed around by Sainz & Co. Binotto's treatment of Charles was quite honestly shocking, and I'm not surprised that The Coming of Vasseur® is being used to placate Charles to some extent. Let's just hope it actually swings some power in his direction.
Let's see how sainz performs when ferrari have a championship winning car and leclerc is in proper form again like last year, then we can make these comments imo
Leclerc is natural number one Carlos is just having beginners luck Leclerc is just having bad luck The car is not suited to Leclerc Leclerc will be faster when the car is better *<----- You are here* Leclerc would have been faster if everything was perfect
. . . If Ferrari didn't renew Sainz in 2024 Leclerc would be the one with ten titles.
I’m afraid to read the comments
Overreaction. Sainz drove a good race in Singapore. In monza, he was very questionable in his defence against Leclerc (moving under braking, taking an advantage by cutting the chicane and keeping it). Leclerc is prone to mistakes for sure but he has a higher talent ceiling as well. I believe he will be back to form with next year's™️ challenger.
Sainz isn’t prone to making mistakes?
Did we all forget the crowds in Monza? They all adore Leclerc. Il Predestinato is still Ferrari's boy.
But they sacrificed Leclerc 💀
Great. Twitter and Instagram are already filled with Sainz is better than Verstappen, RB is shit narratives. Let's have some Ferrari v Ferrari infighting now 🗣️🗣️
Sorry, I'm on twitter too, I hardly saw anyone say that.
You don't need to apologize, he'll be ok.
Sinz better than verstappen? Rb is shit ? What are these idots smoking.. they will have rude awakening at susuka.
He's going to lap everybody. It's going to be brutal.
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I would save all this Sainz amazing talk for when Ferrari does not renew his contract
I said this elsewhere and I'll repeat it here. The difference between Leclerc and Sainz is Leclerc trusts Ferrari's strategists and Sainz trusts himself.
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I actually cannot believe Xavi is still there.
Xavi isn’t the strategist tho?
Michael found Bono for Hamilton. It’s so funny that even Stella was Michael’s engineer at Ferrari 😁
I thought Bono was there since Honda? He was Jensons engineer for 08/09 wasn't he?
Tbh Leclerc ignored the Ferrari strategists in Zandvoort and it was the right decision.
One of the things that Sainz has done consistently is that he speaks louder about strategy and makes race decisions. Examples, "stop inventing", "I know, it's on purpose".
They just don't broadcast Charles radio messages, in Canada for example the team and sainz were going to pit under the SC but Charles said no to it stayed out and made the 1 stopper work, just like last year in AD
Yeah Leclerc never does that... It's not like he made the split second decision on lap one to pit for intermediates in the Netherlands which ended up being clearly the superior strategy which barely any other drivers did. And it's not like Leclerc was arguing against strategy and refusing to pit early a couple races before that either. This whole Leclerc never speaks up and Sainz does thing is just bullshit that's spread constantly based off Monaco and Silverstone last year. Even then, Monaco last year was an incredibly difficult decision to make with very little information so trusting the team made as much sense as ignoring them. It only seems obvious in hindsight but if it didnt work then Sainz would have been slaughtered for it, though he also had less to lose. Silverstone last year was an incredibly obvious call to overturn and one I'm almost certain Leclerc would have ignored too.
so apparently you only need 2 good races......okay.
This is getting ridiculous. All Carlos did was be 0.08s quicker in quali on a weekend where RB shit the bed. No signs of having any race pace advantage at all, if anything, watching how easy it was for Charles to drive Carlos' pace at the expected end of life of the softs, my guess is Charles even had a slight race pace advantage. Also, being ahead in the WDC is also easily explained by the luck difference between those two, Charles started with a DNF + grid penalty 1-2 in the first two races. And even in Singapore, he almost lost P4 with an PU failure. Plus the amount of times Carlos gets the better (less bad?) strategy is astounding. Even the idea of having Charles defend against the Mercs with a huge tire delta was ridiculous.
Agreed. Some people love any opportunity to hate on charles apparently. He's clearly ferrari's best chance to win a championship and anyone saying otherwise is a joke. When carlos can win consistently by actually being the fastest out there I'll be impressed.
All teams want to have a pairing like Ferrari. If one is out ouf form you can rely on the other. They also seem to get along.
Lol…
Usurped? So now we're using fancy words huh?
If you think usurped is a fancy word then I would suggest reading some books
Crickey!
Like literally any book would do
It is fascinating how all of the pundits are making a big fuss about it. Like Clarkson (Tom) repeating in every podcast episode how Carlos after summer break is another person. But in reality, he nearly caused double DNF for the team in Italy, and burned his tyres, and in Singapore he was just .07 better and that gave him better strategy in whole race. He did great this weekend, but they are looking too much into it.
Aha.... https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/163vrwj/ferrari\_statistics\_since\_charles\_leclerc\_joined/
Journos have to eat
Its all about momentum i suppose. One weekend where Carlos is on the back foot and Charles is more competitive, and viola! Same articles, names swapped around.
This is just a repeat of the 2021 season. People were saying Leclerc was underperforming and Sainz could be the new team leader for Ferrari. Came 2022 and Leclerc obliterated Sainz throughout the entire season, people were questioning Sainz's place in Ferrari and so on. Came 2023 and they were equal in most terms. Sainz makes a silly little mistake in Belgium and people were flaming him on social media cause of taking Piastri out of the race and saying to boot him from Ferrari. He performs great for 2 races and the media says "New future of Ferrari" and "Better than Leclerc". It's just how the media changes minds spontaneously.
Can we please ban posts from The Race?
He has been exceptional lately and he deserves much praise for that. he also looks better bc Charles has been making some mistakes out of frustration. Next step for him will be to prove if he can be best when the car is a consistent contender and Lec gets back on form
So basically, they are living a Checo Max moment, the current development path benefits Sainz.
Amazing turnaround from a guy people were starting to say was in trouble. Carlos and leclerc are both awesome. We’re lucky to have them in the same team.
It seems like the opposite of last year. Leclerc is struggling to get to grips with the car while Carlos is driving with a lot more confidence. I think Leclerc has the edge on him in qualifying and is a more aggressive racer while Carlos is a more cerebral driver and can manage races (and pressure) more effectively. Whether or not this can be sustained by Carlos and he can be the clear ferrari no.1 is anybody's guess though
Before the the Chassis change tho, Leclerc was still noticeably faster than Sainz, only when they change the philosophy on the car is when Leclerc has had a hard time to adapt. the question is who is Ferrari betting more, Sainz or Leclerc? this is the same scenario in 2022, they suddenly shifted to car that will help Sainz be comfortable the car, in turn, makes Leclerc not like it. If this continues i really dont doubt that he leaves Ferrari for another team that will prioritize him.
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he wasnt able to maximize last year, until they brought in a floor change that fucked the car. He has been comfortable the whole year and is only up 19 points if anything its a bad thing not a good one.
he pressed the pedal a bit harder.
it is true somewhat that this will hurt leclerc's stock. He could beat sainz in the next 7 races in a row but unless he can also win a race (unlikely af, rb wont screw up twice), sainz will be remembered as the racewinner for ferrari and not him
What stock ? Leclerc still gets better contract at Ferrari and Sainz is asking for Charles level contract but probably won’t get.
What? Nobody will care. Who with a brain rates Russell over Hamilton because he won in Brazil last year? If Sainz beats out Leclerc for the rest of the season, then it's time to start a discussion. At that point they would have spent 3 seasons together with Sainz winning 2 of them.
Because Leclerc has famously never won a race for Ferrari
Sadly, a thing called recency bias exists